Spring is salad time. Fresh baby salads, a few different sorts, and baby spinach finally appear in market stalls. I love salad in most of it's forms, as long as it's not drowned in dressing, but spring salad brings hope of warmer sunnier days with it. For the moment that's exactly what it is: a hope. I wish it would stop being so grey. To cheer myself up a few days ago I made myself a baby spinach salad.
Whenever I make baby spinach salad I always start fantasising about new ingredients but always inevitably stick to the lean bacon dices plus mustard vinaigrette line. I just find it's a great combination. I seem to be not the only one who likes it. For one of these strange food-blogging coincidences someone has posted about a very nice baby spinach salad just a few days ago. I'll pick the opportunity here to digress for a second to suggest you have a look at a very nice new food blog, The Passionate Cook. The weblog is hardly two weeks old but there's already plenty of great stuff posted. I'm completely fascinated by the great recipes: just look at the thyme cappuccino post!
The salad I made included baby spinach, pancetta lardons, sauteed and patted dry to remove the excess fat, Roquefort cubes, quartered hard boiled eggs and a mustard vinaigrette made using walnut oil instead of the customary (for me) olive. No quantities since I mostly make this following my feeling rather than my kitchen scales. Good variations are removing the hard boiled eggs or substituting them with poached ones, if you have the hand and nerves for them; adding a few toasted hazelnuts or walnuts adds a nice texture; if you find blue cheese too strong you could use small pieces of fresh Chevre or something like real Fontina or Bergkse, with their somewhat bitter complex aromas. There's plenty of room for mood, personal taste and plain playing around. I think I'm getting an idea for my next spinach salad.
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